Hitachi Global Storage said that it has released 500GB hard drives with 3Gb/s Serial ATA interfaces. The Deskstar T7K500 and 7K160 use a combination of platters at 160GB a throw to produce the high capacities. That means Hitachi will offer densities of 500GB, 400GB, 320GB and 250GB with 8.5 ms average seek time, and for S-ATA drives a 16/8MB data buffer. No pricing is available yet.

Also Western Digital has announced a new 500GB Caviar RE2 hard drive. The drive is part of Western Digital's RAID Edition line, and features a 7,200RPM spindle speed, 16MB of cache, and support for 300MB/s Serial ATA transfer rates as well as Native Command Queuing. While those specifications are similar to the existing consumer 500GB SE16 model, the RE2 sports a longer 5-year warranty, and according to Western Digital, improved performance for random I/O environments. 500GB RE2 drives are already shipping in volume and available at Western Digital's online store for $349.99.